I looked up anti-intellectualism and here is the definition:
>Anti-intellectualism is a profound skepticism or hostility toward science, higher education, and critical thought, often viewing intellectuals as detached elites
. Driven by populist politics, religious dogma, and economic anxiety, it manifests as rejection of evidence and scientific consensus. It undermines democratic decision-making by prioritizing emotional narratives over expert analysis
I would say that there is another possibility to this. Experts and Expert opinions are susceptible to the same problem of social media echo-chambers[0].
Where new ideas and thought tend to be rejected because experts tend to rely too strongly in positions established over the course of a carrier.
So the concept of anti-intellectualism is not solely based on emotional responses. But also based on this concept of creating too much absolute certainty about a situation that doesn't always exist. People have a tendency to reject scientific basis of some information because of this echo-chamber as this dilemma tends to ignore other factors that are not well known. Also scientific pursuits have the possibility of being game by bad actors.
The difference between science and this random shower thought you decided to grace this thread with is that science has some sound epistemological basis, typically evidence, whereas you have nothing.
> The difference between science and this random shower thought you decided to grace this thread with is that science has some sound epistemological basis
Science can have sound epistemological basis, but many times overspecialization can force confidence in areas where there is none and its echo-chambered by people in the field to keep the sense of authority on a subject going.
A weird claim when science is littered with a history of poor, insane explanations for phenomena.
People play back the “Greatest Hits” without really going into the historical misses. The reality is that the quality and predictive power of science is covariate with culture.
There are a lot of good reasons to think that academic culture right now has a groupthink problem, mostly because the group is so much larger. Alternative theories typically have to wait for an incumbent group of thinkers to die. But if the gradient of thought is more continuous then do bad ideas become more sticky?
Tech here can refer to many things. Given the context stated in the article (and literally the title) I think it’s clear the author is talking about SV elites which by definition excludes most of the open source community. And no, a tech company releasing open source code doesn’t amount to much in the face of the firehouse of cash they print. But you should just stick your head back in the sand, it’ll feel better.
The Anti-Intellectualism of the Hacker News Elites.
AIs are useful tools in programming, whether you like it or not. Yes, there is a lot of hype. There is also a lot of ignorance. AI is not going to write an entire complex application for you, but can easily make its development 10x faster.
Gotcha so no real ability to recall this is the same outlet that worked hard to reveal private details about the lives of people it is also now calling anti-intellectualism.
The article is just a regurgitation of the zeitgeist including the vague notion of hating successful rich people without real criticism of the actions they've taken.
I keep saying this and you can check my comment history to verify - HN is botted to an extreme degree. There’s absolutely no restrictions on spinning up additional accounts and any hacker worth their salt could easily spin up an LLM to set up apparent opposition to a linked idea. It’s clear HN has absolutely no problem with this.
What is inexcusable is the large fraction of the community that sees the logic behind the article but avoids getting involved for fear of irritating some future employer, or just because they want to avoid confrontation here. We’re watching tech billionaires usher in a dystopian society in real time. And we want to talk about what exactly? Apparently anything but the Peter Thiel shaped elephant in the room.
Seems like HN is doing something to combat this, considering how many [dead] comments I see in every post (which you can enable by setting `showdead` in your user profile).
I've only recently enabled it so I don't know how frequent dead comments were before the LLM era.
I looked up anti-intellectualism and here is the definition:
>Anti-intellectualism is a profound skepticism or hostility toward science, higher education, and critical thought, often viewing intellectuals as detached elites . Driven by populist politics, religious dogma, and economic anxiety, it manifests as rejection of evidence and scientific consensus. It undermines democratic decision-making by prioritizing emotional narratives over expert analysis
I would say that there is another possibility to this. Experts and Expert opinions are susceptible to the same problem of social media echo-chambers[0].
Where new ideas and thought tend to be rejected because experts tend to rely too strongly in positions established over the course of a carrier.
So the concept of anti-intellectualism is not solely based on emotional responses. But also based on this concept of creating too much absolute certainty about a situation that doesn't always exist. People have a tendency to reject scientific basis of some information because of this echo-chamber as this dilemma tends to ignore other factors that are not well known. Also scientific pursuits have the possibility of being game by bad actors.
[0]: https://truenorthoutreach.com/the-science-of-echo-chambers-h...
> ...It undermines democratic decision-making...
You can tell an intellectual came up with that definition.
The difference between science and this random shower thought you decided to grace this thread with is that science has some sound epistemological basis, typically evidence, whereas you have nothing.
>that science has some sound epistemological basis
"Epistemological basis" the "intellectual" chortled moments before unironically claiming men can become pregnant and math is racist.
> The difference between science and this random shower thought you decided to grace this thread with is that science has some sound epistemological basis
Science can have sound epistemological basis, but many times overspecialization can force confidence in areas where there is none and its echo-chambered by people in the field to keep the sense of authority on a subject going.
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A weird claim when science is littered with a history of poor, insane explanations for phenomena.
People play back the “Greatest Hits” without really going into the historical misses. The reality is that the quality and predictive power of science is covariate with culture.
There are a lot of good reasons to think that academic culture right now has a groupthink problem, mostly because the group is so much larger. Alternative theories typically have to wait for an incumbent group of thinkers to die. But if the gradient of thought is more continuous then do bad ideas become more sticky?
[dead]
This seems to miss the plot on so, so many points. Not worth a read if you came to the comment section first.
Doesn't even discuss open-source when a key point its making is "tech is built on the backs of others".
Tech here can refer to many things. Given the context stated in the article (and literally the title) I think it’s clear the author is talking about SV elites which by definition excludes most of the open source community. And no, a tech company releasing open source code doesn’t amount to much in the face of the firehouse of cash they print. But you should just stick your head back in the sand, it’ll feel better.
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[dead]
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Account is days old, zero karma, comment history is 100% simping for AI.
And? I just joined HN and I like coding with AI. Is it a problem to have a different opinion from you?
The Anti-Intellectualism of the Hacker News Elites.
AIs are useful tools in programming, whether you like it or not. Yes, there is a lot of hype. There is also a lot of ignorance. AI is not going to write an entire complex application for you, but can easily make its development 10x faster.
[flagged]
Not about the specific piece, however, which was good enough to sprout accounts to denounce it.
Gotcha so no real ability to recall this is the same outlet that worked hard to reveal private details about the lives of people it is also now calling anti-intellectualism.
The article is just a regurgitation of the zeitgeist including the vague notion of hating successful rich people without real criticism of the actions they've taken.
[dead]
Good choice of a day to publish this meme article
Good choice of a day to spawn this meme account.
I keep saying this and you can check my comment history to verify - HN is botted to an extreme degree. There’s absolutely no restrictions on spinning up additional accounts and any hacker worth their salt could easily spin up an LLM to set up apparent opposition to a linked idea. It’s clear HN has absolutely no problem with this.
What is inexcusable is the large fraction of the community that sees the logic behind the article but avoids getting involved for fear of irritating some future employer, or just because they want to avoid confrontation here. We’re watching tech billionaires usher in a dystopian society in real time. And we want to talk about what exactly? Apparently anything but the Peter Thiel shaped elephant in the room.
Seems like HN is doing something to combat this, considering how many [dead] comments I see in every post (which you can enable by setting `showdead` in your user profile).
I've only recently enabled it so I don't know how frequent dead comments were before the LLM era.
Fair enough. I actually noticed that right after I posted this comment.